Her Motherhood Wish (Parent Portal 3)

Having family, loving them in all their guises, wasn’t easy. Accepting their issues, dealing with their challenges, was sometimes frustrating, sometimes extremely difficult and yet, ultimately, what mattered to him most.

And things still needed to change. He had to talk to her.

“I was already on my way home when you called, El. I’ll be there in less than five. You want to share a nightcap before bed?”

They used to do it a lot. Hadn’t in a couple of years. Not since the divorce.

“No way. Don’t you dare come home on my account. I’m... Just forget I called...”

“El!” he said abruptly, sure she was going to hang up. “I’m serious, I’m almost turning onto our street. I was on my way home. And I’m in need of a drink. You’re welcome to join me.”

“I’d like that. It’s been a long night,” she said with a weary sigh. “We lost a patient during a procedure...”

Those words blew his plan to have that talk he needed to have with her that night.

As she described what she legally could of her evening, he listened to every word. Caring. Forgiving her the panic for his lack of a note. And feeling like crap because he wished his life was different. Wished it was Cassie he was going home to. Wished he’d met her before she’d decided to have a family, that he’d dated her, married her, and that the child she was carrying had been conceived by choice from both of them.

* * *

“Cass? Do you intend to take the full twelve weeks coming to you for maternity leave?” Troy, the most senior of the partners in her firm, asked as he stopped by Cassie’s desk on Thursday of that next week.

Looking away from the case file she’d been reading on her computer screen, Cassie wondered why Troy was asking. She adored him, purely professionally, of course, but also knew that he didn’t spend his brainpower on the day-to-day running of the firm he’d started nearly forty years before.

“I haven’t decided yet,” she told him. If Alan was born healthy, she only planned four to six weeks off work. She needed to keep herself fully invested in the firm’s cases or lose some of her position among the other lawyers there. It wasn’t discrimination, it was just fact. But beyond that...she needed to work to feel secure. As her family’s sole support, she couldn’t let herself yearn for the life of a stay-at-home mom. Was pretty sure she’d go nuts if she had it.

And if Alan wasn’t born healthy...

“I’ve got a case that could use your brand of expertise,” Troy said, coming more fully into the room. “But it’s sensitive, the client is skittish, and it won’t be good to change up his lead counsel midstream. Shouldn’t be much to do in December and January, but next spring things will really ramp up. I could keep you apprised and ready to roll if you think you’d be back by February.”

“I’ll be back,” she said. And was grinning when she was once again alone in her office. She’d just been given the professional compliment of her career. Troy had given her a very brief rundown of the assignment. The potential merger involved, among others, two parties who’d been through a rancorous divorce, but it would serve all of the companies by bringing them together to give them the market power they ne

eded to survive. Just the thought of it energized her.

Alan had to be born healthy. And this was a sign that he would be, she told herself. Because she had to get back to work soon after he was born. The partners had already allowed that she could work from home as much as possible as her due date grew close, and then after maternity leave. And she had interviews set up that next week for a live-in nanny. It would all work out. Was all working out.

But the professional honor didn’t make it into the texts she shared with Wood that night. The opportunity she’d been given, her choice to accept and her need to plan accordingly, were all on her as a single parent.

She told him that, for now, she’d had the outcome she’d sought for the nonprofit case, though. The executive director still had her job.

Alan had woken her up three times in the night, playing football, she’d decided. And she was suddenly ravenous at the oddest times during the day—all of which she’d also shared with him.

He continued to send nightly photos of the nursery furniture progress and shared an anecdote or two about his workday. Usually something someone had said. And once when someone hadn’t shown up for work and they’d found out he’d been in a car accident.

She felt his pain on that one. Told him so.

He’d shrugged off her concern, saying he was fine.

The following Monday night, when they met for dinner, they’d both been on guard, she figured, based on the fact that both of them had avoided meaningful looks and intimate topics. She told him about the upcoming amniocentesis, scheduled for that Wednesday, possibly the last if everything checked out okay, and he offered to take her as usual. She accepted the offer. As usual.

And when they parted that night, a quick hour after they’d come together with a couple of hours’ daylight left ahead of them, they’d hugged, also mutually, like near strangers.

But they’d hugged.

They had an unusual relationship. One that they’d both accepted as permanent.

And they were making it work.

But she wasn’t as happy as she’d been when they’d been talking about their feelings. And agreeing to be friends.